Documents on Policies and Measures

SD-PAMs: What, Where, When and How? (December 2007)
Jane Ellis (OECD), Richard Baron and Barbara Buchner (IEA)
The use of “sustainable development policies and measures” (SD-PAMs) has been proposed as a possible type of action or commitment for some developing countries in the post-2012 framework. This paper examines what SD-PAMs could encompass, how and where they could be implemented and how they could fit into a post-2012 climate regime. The paper highlights that in order for SD-PAMs to be implemented, agreement is needed on the purpose and definition of SD-PAMs, when countries can start using SD-PAMs, when countries are no longer eligible to focus their GHG mitigation activities on SD-PAMs only, and how SD-PAMs are to be encouraged. The paper concludes that the greater the incentives available for implementing SD-PAMs, the greater the required level of stringency of international oversight – and that a balance will be needed between the international benefits of SD-PAMs and how much oversight is desirable and feasible.

Climate Change Policies (Policy Brief) (August 2007)
Climate change is already being observed through rising temperatures, melting glaciers, shifting rain patterns, increased storm intensity and rising sea levels. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities – mainly fossil fuel use, deforestation and agriculture – cause climate change. If GHG emissions are not reduced to significantly below current levels within the next few decades, there will be further warming and sea-level rise for centuries to come. This will result in adverse impacts on human health, natural ecosystems, and the economy.

Initial Review of Policies and Incentives to Reduce GHG Emissions from Deforestation (November 2006)
by Katia Karousakis
At COP-11 in Montreal (December 2005), a two-year process was initiated to consider policy approaches and incentive options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in developing countries. This paper gives a brief overview of deforestation, outlining the economic concepts related to efficient land-use options and providing an introduction to some of the policy approaches and incentive options that are available to reduce emissions from deforestation. These include domestic and international approaches that have been used in the past to capture ‘forest values’ and options that have been suggested to date to capture the ‘carbon values’ associated with forests.

Policies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Industry - Successful Approaches and Lessons LearnedThe Annex I Expert Group (AIXG) on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held a workshop on 'Policies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Industry - Successful Approaches and Lessons Learned' in December 2002 in Berlin, Germany (Download Agenda and Presentations). This paper is the workshop report prepared by the OECD Secretariat for the AIXG as a background on greenhouse gas emissions in the industry sector and policy trends, workshop conclusions, as well as experience relating to the implementation of policy instruments to reduce emissions in the industry sector.

Climate-relevant Policy Assessment: Recent Work in the OECD, IEA, NEA and ECMT
This paper presents an overview of current OECD, IEA, ECMT and NEA work that may be relevant for designing, implementing and assessing domestic policies and measures for climate change mitigation (and adaptation) as well as to foster international co-operation on climate change. There are a wide variety of on-going projects that may be of interest to climate experts. Some of them focus primarily on climate change. In other cases, climate change is mentioned as one of the main concerns among other policy issues.